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Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

I wrote about this here:

https://austingwalters.com/on-committing-suicide/

Social media is effectively amplifying the smallest segment of society. An extreme left and extreme right, neither of whom really represent the vast majority of people. Worse, I don’t think companies or representatives realize how few even a few thousand retweets really are...

Further exasperating the issue is the fact we deplatform people with opposing opinions. Now Reddit is even removing people who upvote stories or comments differ from their ideology.

It’s getting real scary. That’s why my post linked above is called “on committing suicide”. It’s a dual meaning, I think the country is murdering itself and I’m also risking my entire career to say so.

View on HN

>Worse, I don’t think companies or representatives realize how few even a few thousand retweets really are...

1k retweets could mean as little as someone spent $30[0], think about that you could ruin someones life for $30 and you don't even have to get out of bed to do it.

[0]https://www.redsocial.net/buy-twitter-retweets/

I don't think people realise how manipulated social media is. There are so many marketing services that scan every comment posted on every social media to alert the marketing team when their product is mentioned so they can jump in and start shilling.

I used to use one to scan for my FOSS project name so I could answer questions and help people but the scope for abuse here is huge.

I'm a Canuck, but it is no secret how close our two countries, our peoples are.

Some of us point and scoff, but these are the same sort which laugh when someone stubs their toe. Buffoons, they are.

The lion's share of us watch, concerned. Not just for ourselves, and of what might come from utter chaos to the south.

We are legitimatley concerned for what we view as family. I personally feel as if I am watching a beloved sibling, mess up their life for incomprehensible reasons.

You want to help, you want to intervene, stop the pain.. but you feel that it may only make things worse.

After all, how can you help, when you can't even understand?

I agree with what you said, the media is broken. I can think of some fixes, like a constant "this is not news, but an opinion piece" banner or some such, but I doubt that will really help.

It does seem to me, that a tiny, tiny percentage of the population is causing a HUGE disruption for almost everyone else. I mean tiny, a core of 0.001%, with all sorts of others "hanging on".

While the issues raised have some legitimacy, the media has thrown gas on the fire, and in a way which reduces chances for either side to resolve things.

Instead, we get, as you elude to, absurd, useless theatre.

> absurd, useless theatre.

It may be absurd, but it certainly isn't useless. Divide and conquer/rule has been an effective approach for ages, and the internet has made it even easier and more effective. And the beauty of it is that it seems to be almost impossible for the human mind to detect its presence, which is a big part of why it's so effective I suppose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule

This is exactly what's happening. Hyper-partisan extremist perspectives that are built up by a frenzy of social engagement turning people into blind attackers of whatever they deem "wrong".

We just aren't built for this addiction to a constant global stimulus by faceless anonymous accounts sharing hot takes that can't be verified but elicit a deeply emotional reaction. We're losing our minds.

There are many examples featuring extremists from all around the political landscape, but the one I find simultaneously the most fascinating and terrifying is the Qanon cult. Look into it a bit if you want to see just how deep the folie-a-deux social media rabbit hole goes.

Someone should do a STTNG universe spinoff on the origin of the Borg, kind of like Caprica. "We are Borg. You will be pilled. Resistance is futile. #borg #assimilate #wwg1wga" "Borg" could start off as a fringe cult that goes viral, then someone invents direct neural connections (Neuralink?) and the members of the cult become a superintelligence and take over the whole society. They are the ones who become the first real collective intelligence because they live online and already have this cult identity that submerges the individual.

Once the cult turned superintelligence takes over, it starts venturing out to "red pill" the entire universe.

I mean what do you think is happening in all those cells on those ships? All the anons are meme-ing each other.

But if they had a collective-intelligence, whose purpose really is to assimilate all other intelligences (and ideas, and so consequently ideals) then one would hope an honest, good-faith battle for ideas would play out inside this collective-intelligence and they would see just how indefensible that incel/MRA/redpill rubbish is compared to other ideas grounded in more substance.

More fundamentally: a lot of reactionary opinion and right-leaning politics are predicated on a lack of empathy for others: I detect (armchair diagnosis) a lot of behaviour attributable to being on autistic-spectrum amongst far-right activists on the internet: it’s easy to rail against proponents of equality and doing things for a greater-good when one can’t relate to them - or be physically incapable of relating to them - but neurotypical people can end up also being unable to relate to others online, and this isn’t anything new: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/my-life-aspergers/20...

...so if there really was a collective-intelligence comprised of the worst of reactionary right-wing internet users, then I would actively encourage them to harvest the brains of the Tumblr users they troll so much: that way they would assimilate empathy and finally understand for themselves how the rest of the world operates.

An intresting blog post, but a few comments...

Switzerland has conscription which is conceptually very different from the 2nd amendment in both purpose and implementation. The US had conscription in the past but forcing people against their will to mandatory service is something which individualistic culture tend to dislike.

The effect of conscription on homicide rates is also a complex and difficult topic. There is definitive people who argue that forcing young adults into a pre-determined future is a good thing to shape young women and men into productive citizens. Others argue that robbing peoples right to choose their own destiny is very harmful to anyone who does not fit the mold.

Even with the possible benefits if, on the average, forcing young people into pre-determined destinies would produce more law abiding citizen, I would not personally be in favor of it. As someone who live in an other country with conscription, it is not worth it.

Conscription isn’t related to the second amendment at all.

The US still has conscription. We haven’t called up a draft since the Vietnam war - but every adult male has to register, and there are consequences for failing to do so.

In fact, even non-citizen residents have to register (except those who are on non-immigrant visas), and can be drafted if the draft is reactivated.

This includes undocumented immigrants, regardless of whether they ever had a visa or not.

oh wow, I didn't even know that (the last part).

I've always thought that if a non-citizen is inducted into the armed forces in any way they should immediately be eligible for citizenship. As I understand it, there's still a relatively complex process they have to navigate to get that done.

> Further exasperating the issue is the fact we deplatform people with opposing opinions. Now Reddit is even removing people who upvote stories or comments differ from their ideology.

What are the opposing opinions and the differing ideologies that you're worried about being silenced?

It actually doesn't matter. "Opposing opinions and differing ideologies" must be protected regardless of what they are. It's pointless to cherry-pick.

Exactly. Because once everything isn't protected, someone gets to choose. So what we need are systems where content can't be removed, and users can't be banned, by design.

And yeah, we also need usable and effective filtering, so everyone can choose what to see.

> Exactly. Because once everything isn't protected, someone gets to choose. So what we need are systems where content can't be removed, and users can't be banned, by design.

This is naive at best. I know of no social space on the internet that has light moderation, no moderation, or primarily user-driven moderation that isn't also a dumpster fire.

This is the internet. There are uncountable social spaces on it, and the fantastic thing is that the owners of each social space are free to enforce rules as they see fit. If you are unhappy with the moderation of a social space, or if you get booted, find another one. Or, you could even create your own.

Heck, because this is the internet, you are likely keeping up with many of the people you know from a social space through multiple other platforms, and if you want to peace out from one, you can coordinate a migration.

> I know of no social space on the internet that has light moderation, no moderation, or primarily user-driven moderation that isn't also a dumpster fire.

The cypherpunks list comes pretty close. I don't believe that anyone has ever been banned, and there's no censorship. But yes, there are no ~modern social media like that. Perhaps Notabug could become that, once peers exist.

Dumpster fires aren't problematic if you can filter well enough. And sometimes they're good for lulz :)

When people build their own platforms, the censorship minded mobs go after their upstream providers, like aws and visa. So this "you can always build your own" is not 100% true.

Also, mobs do go after you for your online speech, so the possibility of a platform that keeps your speech up does not preclude the possibility (and fact) of censorship

True enough. However, I don't believe that anyone has taken down a Tor onion service, except by first identifying the server in meatspace. And that's typically depended on OPSEC failures.

It's true that CMU researchers deanonymized onion services and their users by exploiting the relay early bug, and then produced data to the FBI. However, site owners and users would have been safe if they had protected themselves better. By reaching Tor through nested VPN chains, and by using firewall rules or Whonix to prevent leaks around Tor.

So build accountability into interactions with the internet. For example, I believe for most purposes people should use government-issued access to the internet with an identity that ties to their physical self. Anonymity should cost extra and there should be an implicit lack of trust, credibility, etc. from anything anonymous until it can be thoroughly vetted. I like the urbit model for this where short memorable addresses convey value and social reputation whilst fully anonymous entities are allowed but implicitly untrusted.

I don't think this fixes anything. Alex Jones already isn't anonymous.

Real name requirements deter dissidents and vulnerable people, not populist bullies. They even make it worse, because you can be more easily targeted by populist bullies who have your legal name than if everyone is using pseudonyms.

If anything we should make it harder to associate internet users with real people to deter this type of in-person harassment from spilling over from the internet.

It's less the real name aspect and more the fact that identity shouldn't be disposable. Anonymity is not a universal fundamental human right at least as understood historically. Perhaps today many would be interested in making it one. I, however, am more interested in preserving things like freedom of expression, formally, than suggesting that we achieve it by way of universal access to anonymity. It's one of my less popular opinions, but I think it's an important topic to discuss especially light of the whole privacy debate, and certainly in light of dismantling internet mobs.

There's also the element of making the reputation war bi-directional. If somebody can trash my reputation without staking theirs, that's pretty harmful and toxic, except in exceptional cases. I think a structure where people steak their reputations when attacking others by virtue of reputation not being a commodity would help "keep things real". On the flip side, a vulnerable person shouldn't be protected just because they're vulnerable. If they're being oppressed then they may steak their reputation or find someone else to do it for them, but they don't get an easy out just because they're perceived as vulnerable.

> Anonymity is not a universal fundamental human right at least as understood historically.

In practice starting over was. For almost all of human history, no matter how bad things turned against you where you were, you could pick up and go somewhere else. You would have to start over from nothing in a place where no one knew you, but at least you wouldn't have to deal with having negative a billion social points forever because of some slanderous allegations that were all anyone would talk about in your home town before slamming the door in your face.

Which you're obviously taking away if someone can effectively move a thousand miles away but still can't change their name, because then any slander would follow you everywhere.

> I think a structure where people steak their reputations when attacking others by virtue of reputation not being a commodity would help "keep things real".

This doesn't actually resolve the asymmetry, because there are a great many people whose reputations aren't worth anything to begin with, or who are too young to realize that they are.

You also still have the problem that reputations are community-specific. If someone is a vicious extremist in a community of vicious extremists, anti-social behavior against outsiders improves their reputation within their community. They may regret it later when they grow up and tire of that lifestyle, but that doesn't stop them at the time. It may even make it worse, because once they've trashed their own reputation among reasonable people by behaving badly, they can't get a do-over and their best option becomes to continue to behave badly and stay in the community where that gets rewarded.

> On the flip side, a vulnerable person shouldn't be protected just because they're vulnerable. If they're being oppressed then they may steak their reputation

It's not about reputation in that context, it's about safety. Democracy advocates in China get arrested or worse. Any system that rate limits pseudonyms has got to be mapping them to real people to determine whether you have one already, but the existence of that mapping is the thing that compromises their safety when their oppressors use it to find them.

> or find someone else to do it for them

So you have a dozen Democracy advocates in China. None of them can use their own name or they'll be arrested. If they use the name of one of their compatriots, they get arrested instead, so how does that help?

Which is why it must be illegal to arrest someone for an opinion in the first place. Anonymity is a tool that can help in certain circumstances, but the problem is that a vulnerable person feels vulnerable to begin with. Anonymity doesn't fix that, the cultural climate does.

I suppose, but when discussing technology for online privacy and anonymity, it's prudent to make worse case assumptions. We can't assume that people won't be arrested, prosecuted, tortured and killed based on opinions, baseless allegations, hearsay, and so on.

Also, "vulnerable persons" aren't people who feel vulnerable, as in being emotionally insecure. They're people who are vulnerable, given their circumstances. For example, Hong Kong residents who advocate independence from China. Or male homosexuals in Saudi Arabia and some African countries.

That feels a lot like saying we don't need seatbelts if we would just stop having traffic accidents. A fine argument if there haven't been any traffic accidents in the last hundred years, but there have.

> Real name requirements deter dissidents and vulnerable people, not populist bullies.

That's where I'm coming from, for sure.

You and like-minded peers could have that, for sure. I can see the value for professional networks. Otherwise it'd arguably be far too dangerous.

I'd love to discuss this in some other context somewhere sometime (: I believe the internet is facing a type of identity crisis, so to speak and there's got to be a middle ground between a giant mass of anons and a polite dinner table gathering. But I'm not sure what the right balance is or the exact mechanisms we're lacking.

Hey, I'm pretty sure that Steve Newman would create a group for us on Podaero :)

The Internet is way large enough for all the spaces that we want. It just happens that I primarily focus on anonymity, privacy, and resistance to censorship. Both to protect dissidents, and to protect the ~clueless from destroying their lives.

Invite only ):

This is from a Show HN that didn't take off. Maybe the code is still valid.

https://podaero.com/info/show-hn

> And yeah, we also need usable and effective filtering, so everyone can choose what to see.

I'd be careful about mentioning filtering.

I just remembered that there was a Reddit Masstagger that helped folks with that filtering, but people got really upset about how it infringed on free speech and might have even gotten Google or Mozilla to remove it from the extension store.

I think there might have also been some for Twitter, which I imagine would have elicited a similar reaction.

How can filtering infringe free speech? People can say whatever they want, but why should I have to hear them?

Also, any software tool that can be removed by someone else is broken by design. But yeah, maybe that's why there aren't any useful tools for using Twitter :(

> How can filtering infringe free speech? People can say whatever they want, but why should I have to hear them?

Simple. There's people agitating for free speech on idealistic terms, and then there's people agitating for free speech because they have an agenda and want a captive audience.

You can even see it in this comment thread. Take a look around and see if you can find any greyed-out comments that are arguing against the pro free-speech crowd. Down-voting is censorship via mob rule, so that should be twice as distasteful, but yet you see greyed out comments. The folks doing that are the latter, and not the former.

I advocate free speech idealistically. In case it wasn't obvious.

I don't want filtering that's imposed by sites or their users. I want filtering that's implemented locally. I'm OK with opt-in filter lists, such as those used by ad-block extensions, as long as they can easily be customized. But I'm not OK with server-based filter rules that prevent me from ever seeing stuff.

On HN, I have "show dead" enabled, and I occasionally vouch for dead comments.

Edit: typos

Hold on, "down-voting is censorship"? Since when? The content remains. No disciplinary action is taken against anyone who's comment starts to turn grey. It's simply a feedback mechanism members of this forum use to signal to each other the quality of the content being posted. The analog would be if people here started mass down-vote campaigns against a person because they posted something off-beat, or if we all started petitioning mods to remove content we found uncomfortable.

You generally gravitate towards down-voting unhelpful, out-of-place, or in some way inaccurate content not simply content you don't agree with, BTW. More often than not I see comments start to turn grey because they miss the point and/or aren't really useful contributions to the discussion. Good points, despite the position being argued, tend to remain opaque.

> Hold on, "down-voting is censorship"? Since when? The content remains. No disciplinary action is taken against anyone who's comment starts to turn grey. It's simply a feedback mechanism members of this forum use to signal to each other the quality of the content being posted.

If one fails to stay within the boundaries of HN's Overton Window, you run a high chance of being rate-limited for "starting flame wars", regardless of whether you were the one who actually started it. What comes after that I'd rather not find out so I try to keep my opinions to myself as much as possible. Whether downvotes are used to detect instances of dissenting opinions is unknown, but it's one of the most obvious ways to discover it I'd think.

> ...not simply content you don't agree with, BTW

You do not actually know this, it is a heuristic prediction. Even getting a half-accurate feel for that would require access to voting data and a lot of time reading over downvoted comments.

People often do not even know why they themselves are doing many things, such is the nature of the human mind, that evolved to optimize for speed over accuracy.

What if that ideology encourages violence against a certain class of people? Must that be protected?

The trouble is that what is considered "violence" varies from person to person, and from ideology to ideology.

You don't have to protect the actual calls to violence. But if you don't protect the associated ideology, you're going to end up excluding basically all politics. I've never seen a large political movement that didn't contain a few bad actors promoting violence.

In the same way that gangsta rap music is protected, yes.

Actually it does matter, if we want to be honest about why we're even having this conversation.

Deplatforming and banning doesn't happen because of some abstract whim, so defending it in abstract terms sans context seems like it's overlooking a large chunk of the conversation.

No. It doesn't. We're having this conversation because angry mobs are unjustly destroying peoples lives. If you think that's okay then we're at an impasse.

Abstract freedom of expression is a prerequisite for preventing oppression by majority rule. It's fundamental to our core as citizens in the United States.

To be clear, are you saying that if I don't agree with preserving the abstract freedom of expression on private social spaces, I am pro angry mob destroying peoples lives?

Not directly, of course. I am saying that the concession that we need to moderate "dirty" behavior is, in and of itself, the rhetoric that validates the mob behavior we're seeing. And there's a difference between dirty and illegal. We do not disagree that unlawful content can responsibly be remove by citizens from the internet. The extrajudicial removal of miscreant expression is what we're talking about.

> I am saying that the concession that we need to moderate "dirty" behavior is, in and of itself, the rhetoric that validates the mob behavior we're seeing.

I think that's a stretch.

The problem with Twitter isn't the moderation or the "leaning", it's the sheer size of the thing. Any sort of decent moderation is completely impossible at the scales of Twitter, and I voted with my feet a long long time ago and frankly don't feel like I'm missing anything.

On the other hand, there are plenty of smaller social spaces out there that are well moderated, do not treat all viewpoints equally, but at the same time somehow manage to prevent their users from anti-social mob justice.

We're probably getting closer to some ground we do agree on. It sounds like we both support the ability for communities to form around a shared set of virtues, moderation philosophy, etc. Totally. And it's okay for those communities to moderate and police themselves. What I disagree with is the idea that it's healthy for speech platforms to operate in a mode such that certain speech universally constitutes e.g. violence and must be banned. I believe that mindset is destructive towards the relatively fair playing field we've laid down at least in the US where we are supposed to protect individuals' right to express themselves.

In Twitter's case I think you've nailed it. They're so big that effective moderation that pleases everyone is simply unmanageable. What that signals to me is that practically they should be considered a speech platform. Otherwise any attempts to moderate will feel like social cherry-picking. Once classified as a platform we should treat them differently, both legally and colloquially. Legally platforms would be absolved of taking responsibility for the content posted by individuals. And colloquially if people understand they're a platform, and platforms come with self-service tools to make sure unwanted content doesn't show up front and center in your feed, then I think we can collectively mature in our approach towards and response to "dirty" content.

Anyway I don't use twitter either and don't expect nor am I really all that interested in a twitter solution. I'm abstractly defending the social maturity required to tolerate diverging viewpoints without resorting to censoring and banning and extrajudicial mob justice because I believe required to prevent oppressive majority rule.

> What that signals to me is that practically they should be considered a speech platform

I'm not really sure what problem you're solving here. The social space is too big to moderate effectively, so hamstringing what little power the company chooses to exercise over its own space is supposed to somehow make things better? I don't see it.

You seem to lack empathy for people who's content is being removed from these platforms. It may be difficult to see it and therefor find empathy, today, because these people seem radical to you--I get it. But keep in mind, no so many years ago, it was homosexuals, then trans people, etc., who were attacked and silenced and who's lives and livelihoods were threatened. We have to continue to protect peoples' ability to express themselves universally as technology evolves and provide platforms where they can't be bullied and destroyed by a riled up mob or institutionally silenced and de-platformed for dirty content. It's about supporting a voice and a platform for the counter-culture of today so that it may be liberated tomorrow just as the miscreants of yesterday are seen in a new light today. That is the problem we're solving.

> You seem to lack empathy for people who's content is being removed from these platforms.

I lack empathy not because I disagree with their politics, but because "getting booted out of a social space on the internet" seems like a strange non-problem.

Keep in mind that Twitter moderation is a joke no matter what side of the aisle you're on, and people leave not only because they got banned, or somebody they liked got banned, but also because of the perception that the moderators are asleep at the wheel and are too slow to take action - if they ever do.

Thing is, this is the internet. There are other sites out there. Most of them are accessible from typing something in your web browser. If there is a social space out there whose moderation you find more agreeable, why would you hang out someplace you're not welcome?

> We have to continue to protect peoples' ability to express themselves universally as technology evolves and provide platforms where they can't be bullied and destroyed by a riled up mob or institutionally silenced and de-platformed for dirty content.

You're not going to find that platform on Twitter. But you shouldn't have expected to find it on corporate-owned advertiser-friendly Twitter in the first place. The revolution will not be televised; brought to you by Xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions.

It isn't all right wing stuff. The recent banwave took out probably the largest leftist community on the internet after a long period of banning users who upvoted opinions there, such as:

* Slaveowners deserved to die

* John Brown is an American hero

* Police & large-corporate property constitue legitimate political targets during protests

etc.

Essentially reddit wants to restrict the scope of permissible discourse to the same region allowed on mainstream news websites: support of neoliberal capitalism with debate focused on how overtly racist the system should be.

And? What did people expect would happen? You cannot trust large corporations with those kinds of discussions.

The thing is, I don't think the solution is to force Reddit to host those kinds of subreddits - the solution it to find or create a different social space. Alternatives to those spaces exist, you just have to look for them.

Reddit itself was such a place not that long ago. Lust for power and money seems to frequently find a way to corrupt even those with the best of initial intentions.

Yes, things seem to be coalescing around raddle.me.

They threw them under the bus to make the banwave come off as non-partisan.

"John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true and brave, And Kansas knows his valor when he fought her rights to save; Now, tho the grass grows green above his grave, His soul is marching on.

He captured Harper's Ferry, with his nineteen men so few, And frightened "Old Virginny" till she trembled thru and thru; They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew, But his soul is marching on."

A comment on your blog post sums up quite well my opinion of your piece-

>I cannot believe you wrote a web page that reads my mind and converts it into text! This is the most amazing technology I have ever seen. It literally scanned all my chaotic thoughts and emotions over the last couple of months and distilled them into a series of coherent, well written sentences that convey exactly what I wanted to say, but didn’t know how to say it. You are either the most amazing programmer in the world, or an excellent essayist. Either way, thank you.

I agree. Thank you for that essay, I'll be sharing it with several of my friends.

It may be a case of just talking louder than the other comments (amplifying as you say)

Your last paragraph is a strategy I've labeled "tarpitting" (you want to avoid these environments or at least point them out).

I rarely click social links, but the Seattle hit-and-run comments on Twitter shows the noise floor levels.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ASeattleStoner/status/12796532088...

Everything about the link is NSFW, but it summarizes your comment very well.

"Now Reddit is even removing people who upvote stories or comments differ from their ideology."

Could you provide some examples please? Assertions are all very well.

(BTW "the country" is not HN. I'm a Brit)

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/techwatch/corinne-weaver/2...

First of all, Newsbusters is crap.

Secondly, that story does not say what you say it does. What Reddit is doing is actually warning people that they are interacting with the site in the manner of coordinated bots. Certainly you aren't suggesting they should just banhammer at first blush, isn't a warning a nicety?

Whether or not these are botnet operators complaining that the site has developed defenses against them is a questoin for the reader, but the fact remains that something gets posted, something gets flagged, and if that happens to be coincidentally the only (or most of) the stuff you upvote, then the defenses start falling into place to your detriment.

How would you deal with the problem as I've stated it (accounts that only upvote stuff that winds up getting removed)?

With all those words you typed you could have done a whole lot of googling to find a source befitting your standards. Reddit sends you warnings, several of them, before banning your account if you upvote things it doesn't like. I know because it happened to me.

That's not a problem as I see it so I don't need a better source telling me it is a problem. And you know just as well as I do that it's not, "things it doesn't like."

Well that was quite a read. What is wrong with a content provider upholding its publicly stated policies?

I'll accept it is a bit strange that POTUS might be deemed afowl of their policies but POTUS never used to tweet, twaddle or play silly buggers beyond what was expected, until this one.

POTUS seems to have decided that despite being the leader of the free world, his message isn't getting across via the entire world's media. So he uses Twitter.

lol.

The right elected someone who is on the extreme compared to more moderate candidates in 2016. The left nominated a moderate in 2016 and 2020. I can’t help but to conclude that the extreme right is the majority of the Republican Party.

Sanders was rejected twice.

If we had an extreme left in the US, it would be doing things like advocating forcible nationalization of companies. What we have is a left that is trying to prevent people from dying in medical poverty, and generally isn't ok with black people being randomly murdered in the streets by police.

Donald Trump is extreme. But he is not "extreme right."

If he isn’t extreme right - what positions would be to the right of his?

Basically any republican since Reagan.

I mean, it's not like there's a reliable permanent definition of “right wing”, but Donald Trump was the first President to support gay marriage during his campaign, and his platform in large part reads like Bill Clinton's (especially on illegal immigration), minus the AWB and belief that China would liberalize.

He “supported gay marriage” but then tried to take away rights from the transgender.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/12/8680730...

Clinton never campaigned on an outright ban legal immigration for all Muslims. This was far to the right of all of the Republican candidates who actually disagreed with him.

> He “supported gay marriage” but then tried to take away rights from the transgender.

What rights do you think he took away, or attempted to take away, from transgender people?

P.S. why is that in quotes? It's literally true. And twenty years ago, when the Supreme Court was tasked to decide whether an incidence of workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was legal, he proposed legislation to make it explicitly illegal. Furthermore, during the heyday of DADT and DOMA, Donald Trump was (consistent with today) not for them at a time when they were popular among Democrats, in 1999 saying “that's not something that would disturb me” when asked about gays and lesbians serving in the armed forces.

Actually being seen by provider? Before the recent Supreme Court decision, a hospital could refuse treatment if they thought being transgender was a “sin”.

I linked the article in the comment you replied to.

Except the decision does not say that, it says that sex discrimination is discrimination based on sex, rather than on gender identity; however gender identity discrimination is inherently sex discrimination anyway.

Not if you believe that there is no such thing as someone being transgender and that your gender is what God gave you.

Do you really think that he put out this guidance for any other reason than to pander to the religious right?

You are replying to a peculiar caricature of what I've said.

A more right-wing politician would be:

* Fiscally conservative

* Against tariffs

* Actually protective of gun rights

* More interventionist in foreign affairs

* Strong law and order approach to drug policy

* Unsupportive of gay marriage

* Actually religious

It's a pretty commonly held view that Trump is more populist and "not a real conservative" even among his opponents.

When has there ever been a seriously fiscally conservative Presidential Candidate?

Buchanan was considered one of the most right wing candidates in modern politics and he was very much pro tariffs.

Trump is also very friendly with the NRA. Reagan was all about gun control - at least when Black folks were exercising their rights (the Muliford Act)

He might support gay marriage but he also tried to remove health care from the transgender.

All Republican candidates pander to the religious right without being actually religious.

This is a pretty poor argument. It's not really coherent.

> When has there ever been a seriously fiscally conservative Presidential Candidate?

> All Republican candidates pander to the religious right without being actually religious.

These aren't relevant to whether or not Trump is "extreme right." A politician who is more in line with them (like a Ted Cruz or Paul Ryan) would be more right-wing.

> Buchanan was considered one of the most right wing candidates in modern politics and he was very much pro tariffs.

> Trump is also very friendly with the NRA. Reagan was all about gun control - at least when Black folks were exercising their rights (the Muliford Act)

These are just very cherry-picked examples of other politicians whose policies were also not 100% right-wing. That doesn't change the fact that tariffs and gun control (e.g. banning bump stocks) are not right wing positions.

> He might support gay marriage but he also tried to remove health care from the transgender.

He wanted to repeal Obamacare completely, but yes, that would include coverage for transgender people.

I guess to me words still have meaning. If Trump is "extreme right", then "extreme right" doesn't mean anything except "I'm on the left and I don't like this guy." But I suppose that's the norm in 2020.

These aren't relevant to whether or not Trump is "extreme right." A politician who is more in line with them (like a Ted Cruz or Paul Ryan) would be more right-wing.

Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan both voted for the tax cut that reduced revenues but didn’t reduce spending - increasing the deficit.

He wanted to repeal Obamacare completely, but yes, that would include coverage for transgender people

It wasn’t just about repealing ObamaCare.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/12/8680730...

> he also tried to remove health care from the transgender.

How on earth could that be possible? Exclude them from the free government health care that other people get? Prohibit them from paying for their own healthcare? That's far too extreme to be true. I don't believe you unless it was just one of his random tweets that he doesn't really mean.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/12/8680730...

That's about sex discrimination being extended to transgenderism by Obama. Removing that is not at all what you said with "remove health care from the transgender". Exaggerating something to make it sound worse than it really is is dishonest if you know it's wrong or shows your opinions are misguided if you believe it's right.

So removing discrimination with regards to health care discrimination wouldn’t be paramount to removing health care in a conservative state if a provider refused to treat someone who was transgender?

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